Is Sony liable to third parties for PSN outage? Ars explores the damage

The PlayStation Network is still down, and Sony isn't giving the press or customers any idea of when we can expect to play online. While this doesn't make the gamers happy, the only thing we have on the line is the cost of the games and our time. For third-party developers it's a matter of business, and selling games that rely on online support on a system where the online play has been disabled is an uphill battle.

Third-party publishers are losing out, and it's hurting their bottom lines. Would they have a case against Sony?

With developers losing revenue and also development time (as they can run no testing on PSN) it will be interesting to see if there is an increase in XBox 360 exclusive titles. Developers already find it a hassle creating cross-platform games for PS3, so maybe this will push some of them over the edge.

And you provide a valid and thoughtful counter argument amirite? lol. What he says makes sense. Devs cannot test online portions of their game, thus hindering development time and money. Would Sony be liable for this? I would think so. The blame falls on them for not having the right amount of protection. I'm sure they just had their heads so far up their asses that they couldn't think anything could happen to PSN.

I mean, come on. Sony was so ignorant as to think that PS3 was unhackable and when it was hacked they threw a bitch fit and got their panties in a bunch.

Lol, my comment is based on conversations I've had with a friend who is a game developer. So yes I do know what I'm talking about!

We won't see a change immediately given the development cycle of games, but it will be interesting to see if more new titles announced later this year go XBox exclusive. Sony is going to have to come up with some pretty heavy incentives to keep developers on board.

Games released during the downtime are experiencing lower than usual sales. Not to mention no sales revenue from the PlayStation store. For small independent developers who release only PSN games the hit could be a very serious problem.